


A Matter of Principle

by kathryne



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, Queer Friendship, Warehouse 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathryne/pseuds/kathryne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which H.G. and Oscar Wilde banter, flirt, and dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Principle

**Author's Note:**

> This began when [crazycat9449](http://crazycat9449.tumblr.com/) on tumblr kindly followed up on my throwaway comments about wanting to see a friendship between Helena and Wilde by sending me the manip below. From that, this arose, so many thanks!
> 
> Also, though it seems almost ridiculous to mention that a Warehouse fic is historically inaccurate, this one definitely is. Corrections welcome, but some of the discrepancies are artistic license. Yes.

_London, February 1895._

“Wilde, don’t be a fool.” Helena picks up her pace, stalking ahead of him down the streets. The crowd parts around them; whether they’re reacting to Wilde’s notoriety, the novelty of a woman in trousers, or the expression Helena suspects is on her face, she has no idea. “Surely you don’t intend to go through with it,” she shouts over her shoulder without slowing.

“Ah, but I do.” Wilde’s long legs allow him to keep up with her easily despite her furious stride. “Queensberry Rules, ha! The cunt thinks he’ll knock me out without striking a blow. Well, he’ll soon learn."

“He’ll _learn_?” Helena stops dead, clutching her locket for strength. Wilde strolls around her, face set in a supercilious smirk. “For God’s sake, Wilde! You cannot – " Looking at the crowds around them, she breaks off. 

Grabbing Wilde by the lapel and ignoring his indignant stutters, she tugs him into a nearby close. The scent of spoilt vegetables and human waste surrounds them and Wilde wrinkles his lip fastidiously, but she doesn’t release him until they’re halfway through the passageway, deep in the gloom between buildings. She cuts him off before he can make a comment about their surroundings. “You cannot cry libel against the man when you know what he said is _true_ ,” she says forcefully, trying to keep her voice down.

Wilde quirks an eyebrow at her and smoothes his wrinkled suit before responding. "Really, Wells. I am exceeding insulted. Such insinuations." Tugging his lace-trimmed handkerchief from his pocket, he cleans his fingernails carefully before tucking it away with a flourish. "'Posing.' _Has_ the man never met me?"

Helena smiles despite herself. Wilde's theatrics always have that effect, no matter how she tries. "Surely that makes it even worse," she says, sobering. 

Wilde dismisses her with a wave of his hand. “I shouldn't think so. After all, he has no direct proof. I certainly have never stooped so low as to proposition _him_.”

“If you need evidence – a witness to disprove the allegations…” Helena sighs, frustrated with social niceties. “You may say you were with me, if you must.”

Wilde laughs, genuinely amused. “Wells, you are too kind. But despite Queensberry’s allegations, I am too much a gentleman to save my reputation only at the cost of yours.”

“There’s little enough of mine left by now; it might as well do some good,” Helena says truthfully, though not without relief.

“Helena.” Wilde presses her hand. “You only want to complete the list of London’s eligible bachelors with whom you’ve dallied, don’t you? I won’t be party to such, ah, _posing_." He laughs. "There, see? Now if nothing else you can testify to my sincerity and honest character.”

Helena rolls her eyes and tugs her hand away. “You shall be clapped in irons and put to the screws,” she says, only half-joking.

“Shan’t.” Wilde pouts prettily. He breaks off at Helena's stern glare. "Well, really, Wells. What can happen? If I lose, I lose, but he'll not be so eager to toy with me next time, will he?"

"But you could lose so much," Helena says helplessly. She has been reading the broadsheets even if Wilde scorns them. The sentiment in the city is decidedly against him. Will he not see reason? She tries again. "Please, just think – "

“What, should I let him continue on unchecked, then?" Wilde cuts her off angrily. "He grows more and more intolerable, Helena! He goes to my home, he goes to my club – worst, he goes to the theatres and tries to disrupt my plays! Should I cringe like a cur in this alley, should I let him keep forcing his way between Bosie and me? I will not stand for it!”

“Wilde – Oscar – “

And you, with your visions of a futuristic utopia, you should know better, Helena! You know what it is to be told who you can and cannot love!” He takes a deep breath, then continues less fervently. “Do you not dream of a future where that, too, is equal?”

“Perhaps one with a happier ending,” Helena mutters, thinking of the portions of the novella yet to be released in serialization.

“I am no martyr. I will not emulate the Greeks so far as to come home with my shield or on it. But Bosie thinks, and I agree, that his father needs to be shown that we will not bow under." Wilde looks Helena in the eye. "Nor will I back down. I trust Bosie, and he trusts me."

Helena bites her lip and tries not to point out that were it not for ‘Bosie’ and his obscene – and obscenely expensive – tastes, the matter might never have arisen. “You’re certain you will go forward, then? I cannot sway you?”

Wilde gives a surprisingly sweet smile, free of his usual mockery. “Think of your futures, Helena. It’s you who always claims that we are standing on the cusp of a great change, is it not? Who better to urge our society forward than I?"

He kisses her cheek quickly and, before she can react to his hubris, sweeps back the way they came. Helena looks after him for a long time, even once he's passed into the crowds. "Arrogant tosser," she mutters, but fondly. She only hopes his wit will serve him half so well in court.

*

Five years later, news of Wilde's death reaches Helena as she sits in the Warehouse, awaiting a final judgment of her own. By Wilde's standards, her time machine would have been a failure, never mind its miraculous properties. She never so much as wondered, before, whether she could have used it to travel forward. Wilde, she thinks, would have been so angry with her.

The Regents file out of their meeting room in silence. One look at Caturanga's face makes words unnecessary. She rises smoothly and walks without prompting to the Bronze Sector, where the bronzing chamber gapes like a hungry mouth.

Helena said her goodbyes earlier; anyone else she might care to wish well is dead by her own hand, or nearly. She steps into the chamber and turns to face her small audience, head held high.

If she has any hope left, she thinks as the doors hiss closed in front of her, let it be this: that Wilde's vision of the future, not hers, be that which comes to pass.

**Author's Note:**

> Brief and somewhat accurate backstory:
> 
>  _The Time Machine_ was first serialized between January and May 1895.
> 
> In April 1895, Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's much younger lover Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, for libel after Queensberry called Wilde a 'posing sodomite.' Queensberry amassed so much evidence in his defence that not only did Wilde lose the case, he was subsequently prosecuted for gross indecency and imprisoned for two years. He died poor and ill in Paris in October 1900.


End file.
